To Florence Hayes:

Thanks for reminding me about the CONSER manual. I have the pages in front
of me, that someone had faxed. I'm not so convinced that the following
phrase eliminates all the problems:

    If two DIFFERENT serials are issued in the same place,
    generally prefer to qualify by the corporate body. Use
    place and date only when there is no corporate body or
    term that will distinguish the serials.

A corporate body could be any entity, including a commercial publisher,
or a logo, as could be a "term". The thrust is still toward urging the
cataloger to somehow find something to fit into the category of "corporate
body". I see this also in the phrase "Use place and date ONLY when ..."
(my emphasis). Do we really want to use commercial publishers, logos, and
"terms"? I would prefer if the thrust were "use corporate body only when
there is a consistent use of the body over a period of time" or something
else along those lines. I also see corporate bodies wandering around and
disappearing, then new bodies appearing; what do we do then?

I have to say that the CONSER prescription "feels" like it gives more
latitude (e.g. "generally prefer"; generally gives you an instant out),
and I "like" it better.

I was contacted by mail by the Assistant Chief of the Serial Record Division,
to whom I had sent the letter reproduced and included in today's messages.
She mentioned to me that the issues raised in my letter were discussed in
their Bibliographic Problems Group, but there was no mention of the CONSER
manual being more permissive in tone. She was rather pessimistic and felt
that further revision of the RI would not improve the situation. Maybe I
don't understand the politics of a large organization as theirs, but it
would have made sense to at least consider modifying LCRI 25.5B to be in
conformity with the CONSER guidelines.

What I still see is a reluctance to do an exposition of various situations
that arise when trying to follow the RI and the CONSER manual. I see some
RI's written in a very detailed way, long and picky, covering every possibi-
lity you could ever think of. In the case of this matter we're dealing with,
a happy medium would be OK, with a provision that people follow common sense
and "use feeling" (I used to love that expression from the early 80's RIs!).
I would like to see a clearer definition of "corporate body" and "term" for
this context; that would certainly help some (someone in the Serial Record
Division told me, when I asked about using commercial publishers as corporate
bodies, that they had never intended commercial publishers to be used. My
answer was, "OK, but you don't say that".

I want to say "in the real world," but everyone's real world is unique, I've
found the corporate body provision very hard to apply. Maybe it's because
my serials cataloging experience has been with labor newspapers and radical
periodicals, lots of newsletters put out by pressure groups, etc. Just imagine
what the name authority work was like!

Anyway, I'll say that I like what the CONSER manual says better than the RI,
but I'm not really convinced that it solves the problem any better than what
I've proposed. My "ideal RI" goes into the specific situations that arise and
urges evaluating each situation with common sense.

Thanks again, Florence, for referring me to the CONSER manual.

Rick Gildemeister
Cataloger/OCLC Enhance Coordinator
Lehman College of the City University of New York